The X-Files: Gothic

From netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Tue Jan 31 11:56:24 1995
Path: netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin
From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (MR AUSTIN)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: GOTHIC, part I/VII
Date: 29 Jan 1995 18:46:51 GMT
Organization: University of Bradford
Lines: 163
Message-ID: <3ggnqr$bbb@columbia.acc.brad.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: muser-fddi.acc.brad.ac.uk
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


  X-files

GOTHIC

Part I - Something is out there

Scully yawned and checked her watch. It was rapidly approaching midnight
and she was beginning to lose focus. Her personal log was up to date, and
the reports were typed up, but Pac-Man had five lives left on level
thirty-nine. She dodged a ghost and got to the power pill.

The phone rang. She paused the game and grabbed for it.
"555-6431" she stated, simply. Anyone who knew the number knew full well
who would be answering it.
"Scully." It was Mulder's voice, with that excited tone she knew only too
well. "We just got a call from the Forestry Department. Some poachers in
Missouri ran into something wierd."
"When do we leave?" She said, resigned to her fate.
"We're taking a flight to Jefferson City in four hours. We'll sleep on the
way. This could be really big, Scully."
Dana tried to suppress a yawn, but couldn't.
"Get your stuff together and be ready in two hours. I'll pick you up. I've
got the office to send you a type-up of the reports over the e-mail thing.
Bye." He hung up.
Scully looked at her score with growing dismay. So much for a new
highscore. She clicked the Reset button and waited while the machine
rebooted itself. With a sigh, she opened her mailbox.

The plane's engines put out a steady hum that seemed to be more felt than
heard. Mulder was sleeping, but Scully still couldn't learn the trick of
his fifteen-minute instant naps, and so - her eyes redenned and her mind
sagging towards sleep - she read the printouts.

The two poachers had been found unconcious by a warden. Their shotguns,
and the carcasses in the car, had told the whole story. But when roused
they had begun babbling about something attacking them. The younger boy
had a broken nose. The elder of the two had heavy bruising to the jaw and a
couple of loose teeth - and, claw marks on his arm. The nature of the
marks was unclear, but the spacing was consistent with human hands. The
boys reports agreed on a bipedal humanoid of considerable athletic skill. Tyre
marks showed that a car had been parked nearby, and the boys report
mentioned a black sports car, possibly a Jaguar.

Scully's head jerked up in shock. She'd nodded off. The plane was
descending, and a dull ache in her neck told her she had been asleep in an
uncomfortable position for longer than was healthy. She devoted her
attention to trying to massage her own neck as the plane circled for a
landing.

Their first port of call was the police station where their two witnesses
awaited. The two boys looked terrified. The elder of the pair, John
Jameson, was first up. Mulder clicked on the recorder and settled himself
into a relaxed position. "Now, John, just tell us what you saw."
"It moved like nothing on earth out of those woods. It had these claws,
and there was just no sound, no sound at all. It was dead white, and it
just kept moving and there was no sound." His voice was rising towards the
shrill edge of hysteria, the air rasping in and out of his lungs in
frantic gulps. "It cleared the bonnet in a jump and that's when Mikey shot
it. He hit it but it didn't even flinch, it just turned on us. It hit
mikey in- ina face and there was this horrible crunch and there was blood comi
ng out everywhere...." His voice faded out.
He held up his arm. The scars were still pink and raw.
Mulder looked at the scars, then motioned soundlessly for Scully to check
them. She cast a critical eye over them and then directed a conclusion at
the tape machine.
"Subject has four parallel scars on the lower arm, running crossways to
the bone. Scars are only just beginning to heal and look to have been up
to a quarter-inch deep. The placing and length of these tracks do seem to
be indicative of a human right hand  with sharpened nails."
"It weren't human. It weren't human." John kept mumbling that to himself
even as the guard led him away.

Michael Jameson turned out to be far more lucid than his companion.
"The guy was really pale, like almost white. That was the main thing I
remember about him."
"You say 'The Guy'. Do you actually mean a male human?"
"Human, yeah. This guy was running on two legs, wearing clothes, and he
had skin not fur. As to male, I'm only guessing. It was still too dark to
make out much detail. The guy's skin only showed 'coz it was so white.
Anyway, I see this white blur coming at me and it goes voosh, past my ear,
just a stirring of the air, real quiet. I turn and I see it and I just
squeeze on the trigger, barely even meaning to. I see the holes in the
jacket that the buckshot makes, it's that close. He hits the side of the car
pretty hard, but it doesn't even slow him down. He comes straight at me,
gives me this-" He guestured at his bandaged nose, "-and then it's
sleepytime until I wake up and the warden is standing over me."
Mulder leant back.
"I think that should be enough for now. We may call you again, so don't go
anywhere." Michael was duly ushered out.
"So. Information, Evaluation, Inferences, Possibilities." Mulder span his
chair round.
"Information : Humanoid, pale skin, upright, wears clothes, claw-like
injuries. Above average speed and agility. Evaluation : Information
unlikely to be more than fifty percent reliable. Inferences : there's
someone -" she spotted Mulder's mouth opening and hastily amended, "or
something out there. Possibilities : anything from a circus acrobat with
body armour to something unusual."
"I love the way you sum up everything of extreme nature with 'Something
Unusual'. Let me show you this." He took out one of the familiar folders.
"This has an X-file?"
"Not as such. This particular kind of event has many possible connections,
everything from Bigfoot through Aliens to ghosts and goblins. This is a
compiled file of similar occurences. It inculdes our lovely trip to
Atlantic city amongst others."
"The Jersey Devil." Scully said, remembering.
"Yup. This kind of event - fleeting glimpses of something bizarre -
accounts for ninety percent of the information consigned to the X-files
each year. About half of it is junk, but there are a few gems out there,
and I think this is one. Look at this."
He opened up a map of Missouri. There were magic-marker circles on the
plastic coating over a number of  small towns.
"In the last two months, there have been three events in this immediate
area that could connect. In this town here, a figure was sighted in a
graveyard by some teens. They were smashed aside as this mystery figure
made their exit. One of the newer graves
had been disturbed. Over here, a young couple were disturbed by a pale
figure at the window. The figure vanished, and a black sports car was seen
racing away. The strange thing? In order to be at their window he would
have had to climb three stories up a sheer surface almost entirely smooth
and clear of handholds. There were a number of marks that could have been
caused by pitons - or claws. In this town here, a priest at the chapel was
disturbed during his preparations for midnight mass by someone who be
gged him for the box of consecrated communion wafers. The visitor kept his
face hidden, but the priest vividly remembers the whiteness of the skin.
It's worth mentioning at this point that all these events occured late at
night." He looked up at her expectantly.
"There is a slightly... dark feel to this."
"I'll say. Particles of the Host, Midnight trysts in the graveyard,
strange faces at windows in the middle of the night - we are talking
monster mash time here."
"Particles of the Host?" Scully enquired, curious.
"Consecrated wafers. You are presumably familiar with the theory of
transubstantiation. When the bread and wine are blessed by a priest, some
schools of thought say that they actually become the body and blood of
Jesus Christ."
"Okay. I see the obvious ritual elements to the graveyard and the church,
but that leaves us one apparently unconnected event -"
"The house." They said in unison.
"Jackpot, Scully. That house has to have something to do with these other
events. There is a connection, but it isn't obvious-"
"-Because we lack the correct information or perspective. I do remember
Basic Principles of Detection, Mulder."
"Outstanding. I'm going to look into the incident site. In the meantime,
you know how to talk to computers : I want everything you can get on the
house. Structural blueprints, previous owners, modifications, precise map
co-ordinates-" "Why do you want those?"
"Checking wether it's built on a ley-line."
"You don't seriously-"
"Not entirely. But they might. Know your enemy, think like him, and you're-"
"-half way to catching him. I remember Psychology in Detection as well."
Mulder gave a half-grin. "Good. Let's get to it."


--
+=======================================================================+
| []  "Stop! You are thinking muddily -   |
| Matt.R.Austin []   conduct ordinarily inexcusable! |
| M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk []   Now, youth, you will redeem |
| []   yourself by explaining this |
| []   phenomena to me!" |
| []    - Mentor of Arisia |
+=======================================================================+

From netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Tue Jan 31 11:56:25 1995
Path: netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin
From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (MR AUSTIN)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: GOTHIC, part II/VII
Date: 29 Jan 1995 18:47:16 GMT
Organization: University of Bradford
Lines: 264
Message-ID: <3ggnrk$bbb@columbia.acc.brad.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: muser-fddi.acc.brad.ac.uk
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


   X-files

   GOTHIC

Part II - Shadows Rising.

The site was cordonned off, but the press were sneaking around it anyway.
Tabloid journalists mostly, looking for a bit of half-genuine trash to put
on the front page. Mulder flashed his badge at the officer and stepped
over the tape.

The forensics boys were plaster-casting the tyre tracks left by the
vehicle and measuring the distances. Mulder walked over to them and
checked their current results against the profile for the Jaguar XJS that
he had under his arm. He was hardly surprised
 when the figures matched to within less than a centimeter's difference.
He crouched down and examined the ground on one side of the tyre marks.
Something gleamed, and he took a pair of tweezers from his pocket. With
them, he extracted the tiny object from the mud and held it up.
A slightly flattened piece of shot.
He bagged it and moved on. Three minutes of diligent searching turned up a
few chips of black paint.
Another five minutes of minute examination turned up a jackpot.
In a small rut in the mud, a barely-tinted white liquid had collected.
Mulder called over one of the forensic team, who handed him a syringe.
Mulder took a ten cc sample and wandered over to the woods. He found what
he was looking for : a partially smudged but still clear footprint.
He ordered a cast made and looked carefully round. Perhaps he ought to
check the car over...

Scully logged out and collected the hardcopy results of her search. The
results, unfortunately, mostly consisted of addresses where the
information could be found.

When Mulder got back to the hotel, they compared notes.
"I found a piece of shot that had been flattened slightly - possibly by
impact with a bulletproof vest - or a car door. I also found some small
chips of black paint, probably from the car door - in which case, we can
find out which brand and where from. I also found this." He held up the
small phial of liquid. "What it is, I don't know. It may turn out to be
nothing. "There's an ananlysis coming on approximate height and weight of
our mystery man : I found some footprints which are being checked out now."

"I've got places for us to go. Real Estate agents, mostly. Town Planning
Office, the Records Office... so on and so forth."
The phone rang. Mulder picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Stay away from these events. They do not concern you. The unrighteous
will be struck down." The phone slammed down.
Mulder looked at the handset.
"I think our friendly neighbourhood Ku Klux Klan just delivered an ultimatum."

They spent the remaining daylight hours working through the estate agents
and planning offices. The house had quite a history, even going back only
five years. After the message, they had agreed to stick together rather
than work seperately. Night was falling as they made their way back to the
hotel room. They had faxed a copy of every important file to themselves,
and to D.C. for comparison with the FBI's vast store of information. They
worked for perhaps half an hour before the phone rang, They looked a
t each other, neither willing to answer it. The bell trilled, loud and
insistent. In the end Mulder picked it up.
"Mulder."
"Officer Greenaway, sir. You're just going to love this. about ten minutes
ago, the municipal library here was raided. Check this out : A black
sports car screams to a halt and a pale-skinned man dives out. He goes
clean through a glass door without leaving a drop of blood. Two minutes
later, three guys in monastic robes clutching crucifixes and scimitars
follow him in. Ten minutes after that, the pale man is seen leaving, the
black car screaming off into the night, and the first officer on the scene
finds a corpse messily decapitated and with his stomach torn open and
blood everywhere. I'm faxing you the preliminary reports from the
library. We're keeping the library sealed until further notice."
"Right. Get Forensics on it and we'll see you tomorrow morning."
The officer broke the connection.
"Hang onto your hat, Scully. We've got a ritualistic homicide in the Library."
"What?"
"Decapitation, Evisceration, all the classic signs. We've got some
seriously occult stuff going down here."

It was coming up on eleven when the phone rang again. Mulder, still half
asleep, grabbed for it.
"Agent Mulder." The voice was muffled, but the accent was still
unmistakeable. English. The cobwebs of sleep cleared from his mind.
"Speaking." He said, wondering where this conversation was going.
"Agent Mulder, you are putting yourself and Agent Scully in considerable
danger. The people who you are up against are fanatics. They will
sacrifice your lives and their own without the slightest compunction. This
is a private little war, and you are putting yourself in the line of fire.
Please. For your own sake. Stay out of this."
"Who are you?"
There was a low chuckle.
"According to our mutual enemy, I am a shadow, a dark thing, a cancerous
growth in the body of humanity. I am a feared thing, a dweller in
damnation, a son of satan. As for myself, I am what I am and nothing more.
'Eye of the cathedrals,
Round swan on the river,
False dawn among the leaves am I.'"
There was a click and the line went dead.
Mulder stood and thought for a moment. The quote was familiar. He had
heard it in a bar at university... the drama group had been in and one of
them had quoted it, but he hadn't seen the play... He turned his mind
inwards, looked backwards, searching his memory for posters, comments,
anything. Eventually, he managed to recall a poster. "Lorca's Blood
Wedding," he said, quietly. "He quoted something out of the play. I need
to get a copy out of a library."
"We might as well make it our murder scene."
Mulder, lost in thought, just nodded.

The library was mostly open for business as usual. Only the top floor was
secured against prying eyes. The top floor, they discovered, housed the
state's largest collection of occult literature and one of the ancient
texts seemed to be missing.
Mulder obtained a copy of the Gwynne Edwards translation of Lorca's three
most famous plays -The House of Bernada Alba, Yerma, and Blood Wedding -
and began to read.

"What can you tell me about this missing book?" Scully began. The
librarian, a short, intense, birdlike woman, steepled her fingers and sighed.
"It's not a complete book as such. It's a medieval traveller's notebook of
the strange and the occult. It includes some translated material from the
Necronomicon and the Black Bible, most of which we already have, and it
also has his field notes on what is currently Romania."
"Transylvania." Mulder said, without looking up from his book.
"Right. The notes are oddly close to the Dracula novel. He never got to
meet the mysterious man in the castle, but he does document the puncture
wounds in the necks of a couple of slaughtered villagers. Of course, it's
a third or fourth copy, so how much is original material and how much is sensationalist embellishment we don't know. It also documents meetings with a man-beast who claimed to be the Paris murderer - the inspiration behind the Edgar Allen Poe story "Murde
rs in the Rue Morgue" - and also gia
nt rats in Venice. There's a lot of notes on things like banishing rituals
for demons and spirits. The guy was incredibly superstitious : he got
someone to exsorcize every room he stayed in and he carried a box of
communion wafers everywhere to lay out a protective circle. He died in
what's known as mysterious circumstances : he was found in his room, which
was locked and bolted from inside, flayed open and gutted, and the
occupants of the rooms above, below, and to the sides had heard nothing."
Scully could imagine Mulder setting out to invent a time machine purely in
order to have a crack at solving that one. "Anything else?"
"The guy that was killed was some kind of religious nut. I mean, anyone
can pick up a crucifix and claim to be the new prophet, but this goes
further." She held up a photocopied picture of a crucifix. "The crucifix
has an interesting history. It's greek orthodox, mid eighteenth century.
It was moved around what is now the USSR for several decades, also being
included in missions into China and India. It also vanished for several
years in deepest darkest Romania, of all places. When it re-emerged in the 18
70s, it had this gem set in it at the center." She held up a second
picture, this time an original, of the cross clutched in the corpse's
hand. The crucifix on the corpse was indeed identical to the first picture
barring only a ruby set into the metal above the head of Christ. "It was red
edicated and put back into service in the hands of a young priest. His
ship ran aground on the shores of the Caspian sea and was destroyed. He
carried the cross with him to shore, where he died of exhaustion moments
after pressing it into the hands of a local. The local took it to the
local cleric, who sent it back to the church. It never reached it : It
took nearly forty years to get close to proper authorities. When the
revolution broke out in 1917 it was smuggled out of the country by a
churchman who feared it would be confiscated. He made it as far as Poland.
In 1938, it was in a cathedral in Poland when the Nazis went clean
through. From there, it disappears. No sales recorded, not catalogued as
war spoils, never found again until it turns up on a decapitated and
eviscerated corpse who is clutching, amongst other things, a
well-worn bible and a scimitar. They don't come much wierder than that."
Scully frowned. "How do you have such precise information on it?"
"I had a friend look over the photos. He specialises in tracing artifacts
: he did a search for me. It was fairly easy : the ornamentation on the
edges was a giveaway : that design-"
"Okay, I believe you," Scully said with a smile. "Anything else?"
"Not that I can think of. Oh, yeah, wait a minute. I did a small check and
there's something that's puzzling me." She picked up a bucket and sloshed
water onto the floorboards. "How much do you think was spilt there?"
Scully examined it. "About three, three and a half litres?"
"Less than that. Two pints. I measured it out myself. Funny, isn't it? You
spill a cup of coffee, you think it's a flood. The stain left by the dead
guy's body was slightly smaller than that."

"Exsanguination again?" Scully asked Mulder as they were leaving the library.
"Listen to this.  In act three, scene one of the play - which contains the
quote he gave to me - symbolic characters appear : Woodcutters,
representing the forces of nature - or fate, if you will - and Death The
Beggar Woman - and The Moon. At one point The Moon delivers a monologue
about cutting into the heart so that he can warm himself in the blood.
It's a very intense play that talks about the power of passion over
conformity. It's full of blood-related imagery : the blood of rage, of
passion, the sins of the father being passed on to the son. And we have a
book featuring Transylvania missing. Remember the communion wafers thing?
Sound familiar?"
"So, we have a vampire running around Missouri." She hitched one eyebrow
in an eloquent expression of disapproval.
"She is the Devils concubine! Vampyr, Nosferatu!" Mulder grinned.
"Nice one, Van Mulder " Scully shot back, not letting Mulder see the small
smile that resulted from his performance.
"Well, we do have a pale stranger who has claws, is an athlete of
supernatural ability, and is being pursued by a gang of cut-throat religious loons, one of whom turns up dead, missing a quantity of his blood. I'd say any dissuasive evidence is due about
now."
"Mulder, You and I both know that the Vampire is the ultimate symbol of
evil. Blood is the symbol of eternal life : a Vampire is a twisted version
of a communicant. The Blood equalled the Soul for a lot of the early
churches. Something that took your bloo
d was the ultimate enemy. It's a myth based on the essential psychological
fears of the time.It's like the stories about people with AIDS who
masturbate into mayonaise - it isn't true, it's an expression of our fear
and loathing about the disease -"
"All myths have a grain of truth in them."

When they returned to the hotel, the fax had spewed out three sheets. Two
were lists of negative answers on the houseowners. The other was much more
interesting.
'I've gone through a hell of a lot to send this, so I hope you appreciate
it. I'm pleased to see that Americans are as pig-headed and irrational in
the face of death as everybody else. You are drawing unwelcome attention
to yourselves. The investigation at the library in particular has set our
mutual enemies on the offensive. They aim to recover the crucifix from the
Police Precinct where it's being held at 7:15 in the evening.
Incidentally, your police officers are as unreasonable about impending
danger as it is humanly possible to be. They refuse to listen to me. Go to
it."
Mudler checked his watch. 7:08. He dialled the precinct and explained the
situation in record time. Scully checked her pistol and went outside to
start the car. He took the fax with them and slid into the passenger seat
as Scully drove away at speed. He was looking at the fax again when an
alarm tripped in his head.
"Scully?" He said, tentatively, "Aren't these things supposed to have the
number at the top?"
Scully nodded. "A transmission marker. Number, name and time." She glanced
over at the sheet in his hand.  "The paper's a different brand, too."
"Stop the car. I'm going to cover the room : you get to the Police station
and check what the hell is going on. I think we're right in the middle of
an elaborate set-up."

Slipping silently, barely breathing. Hot smell of skin and flesh like rich
perfume in the air.
-thirstyhungry-redrising-teethsharp-clawsOUT-
Down, calm, sidling through the lenghthening shadows of the evening,
sunglasses conspicuous but necessary, skin caked with sunblock, just
another ordinary guy.
-THIRSTYHUNGRY-smoothtaste-soclose-soCLOSE-
The woman swinging idly on the verandah glanced in his direction. he
melted out of sight in a split second, sinking into the shadows, swathing
himself in the darkness
-tenderprey-soft and easy- only a lunge away-
The Red Thirst was rising, sinking its claws into his pysche. His canines,
always sharp, were grating painfully in their sockets as they extended. He
fought back the fanged thing in his mind - the animal instincts to rend
and tear and glut himself on the sweet, smooth redness - and slipped into
the shaded porch of the room. With the ease of long practice, he flicked
the two thin picks from their hiding place in the cuff of his shirt. In
three seconds, the lock was open and he had slipped inside. He pulled the
curtains on the room and felt the sharp knives of pain begin to receed.
With his eyesight clear of the technicolour sparks of pain and the
red mist of the rising thing, he began to read, rapidly, carefully, not
wasting a moment.

It was at that moment that Mulder's key turned in the door.


--
+=======================================================================+
| []  "Stop! You are thinking muddily -   |
| Matt.R.Austin []   conduct ordinarily inexcusable! |
| M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk []   Now, youth, you will redeem |
| []   yourself by explaining this |
| []   phenomena to me!" |
| []    - Mentor of Arisia |
+=======================================================================+

From netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Tue Jan 31 11:56:26 1995
Path: netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin
From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (MR AUSTIN)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: GOTHIC, part III/VII
Date: 29 Jan 1995 18:48:05 GMT
Organization: University of Bradford
Lines: 255
Message-ID: <3ggnt5$bbb@columbia.acc.brad.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: muser-fddi.acc.brad.ac.uk
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


  X-files

  GOTHIC

Part III - In The Balance.

Scully was already regretting the decision to split up. One or other of
the potential emergencies might turn out to be a ploy to divide and
conquer. She would be relatively safe with a station full of trained
police officers, but Mulder was out on his own... but they
couldn't ignore the possibility of 'divine retribution' being meted out by
scimitar-wielding psychopaths. She narrowed her eyes and pressed down on
the accelerator.

Mulder was alert and cautious. He utilised every trick and tactic the FBI
had taught him. He was ready, with his gun cocked and aimed, when he opened
the door. 
It was not enough.
The door swung inwards fast, wrenching the handle from his fingertips. A
pale hand held like a chopping blade stabbed to his right shoulder and his
arm went numb, fingers spasming open and dropping the automatic to the
ground, where it thudded dully on bare boards. Another hand caught him in
the stomach and he doubled over, gasping for breath. A black-swathed
knee pistoned into his face even as he struggled for breath and he
clutched at the explosion of pain in his nose. Two hands seized him under
the armpits and hurled his 180-pound frame across the room, landing him on
the sofa. In the dim light of the room, his assailant's eyes gleamed redly.
"Breathe from the shoulders down and it'll pass. You really should do some
advanced training, Agent Mulder. I could have taken my time beating you to
death and still had time to make myself a four-course meal before Agent Scully
finished dealing with the Brotherhood."
Mulder had eased his breathing back to normal. He gingerly prodded his
still-painful nose, but decided that nothing was actually broken or even
actually bleeding. It just hurt like hell,  that was all.
"So it wasn't just a ruse?" He tried to shift his weight, ready to roll
and spring. There was a  low, throaty chuckle from the darkness.
"Don't even think about it, Mulder. I've been killing for food since long
before you were born. As to the raid, yes. The Brotherhood want that
crucifix for some reason, badly enough to put out some very obvious
feelers for it. I propose a trade of information."
"I am at a disadvantage here." Mulder pointed out. "Lying on the sofa isn't
the most  convenient position to argue."
"Sad but true. Ain't life grand? You see, Mulder, I'm a weapon with a
right end and a wrong end. And you are currently on the wrong end. Now
that might change, but not without some essential groundwork. So lets
exchange. Why is this crucifix so important to them?"
"First I want to see who I'm talking too."
"Aren't we the canny one. Turn on the bedside lamp. If you touch the
flourescents I'll  have your jaw off before you can so much as twitch."
Mulder clicked the small bulb on.

His assailant was still mostly in shade, but the light from the small bulb
showed pale skin and glittering eyes that had an odd, almost red tint to
them. It also served neatly to highlight the  needle-sharp canines.
"So you are a vampire."
The vampire inclined his head slightly in a small bow.
"Stefan Morden D'Vorak at your service. Created for destruction, trained
for killing, and out for a little well-earned vengeance. Now. Crucifix."
Mulder related the story more or less word-for-word. The vampire crouched,
silent, in the  shadows. Mulder came to the end of his tale
"That would explain a few things." The Vampire said, at length.
"Like what?" Mulder asked, fishing for anything.
"What do you have to trade?"

Scully screeched the car to a halt and dived for the precinct door. The
officer in charge began to protest, but shut up when she shoved her badge
under his nose. He had just picked up the  phone when the robed figures
entered. Scully slipped one hand under her jacket and loosened
the automatic in its holster.
"We are the Brotherhood of the White Rose. You have our sacred property in
this building  and the Lord wishes its return."
"Special Agent Scully, FBI. The crucifix you are referring to is evidence
in a murder case that my department are investigating. You are more than
welcome to have it back after the case has gone before the courts."
"The Lord demands its immediate return. It has a higher calling."
"God may want it, but I'm under orders from the Bureau. Take it up with them."
"When the unrighteous bring tyranny upon the faithful, then let it be
known that vengeance is the Lords. We are but instruments of that vengeance-"
Scully whipped her pistol out and went into the classic isoceles stance,
her left hand coming up to support her right.
"If I squeeze this trigger," She said, taking deliberate aim on the first
robed man's forehead, "The wad will leave a neat round hole and I'll see
the terror in your face as it pushes your brain out through the back of
your skull." She lowered her aim to the heart. "If I squeeze the
trigger now, the wad will smash your spine and you'll feel your legs go
dead even as your  heart explodes. There is no nice way to be shot."
"Agent Scully, you can't threaten these men unless they have committed a
crime-" the desk sergeant began. Scully's eyes flickered to him for a
split second, and the robed man made his move. With surprising agility, he
sprang sideways, drawing from the voluminous folds of his cloak a lethally
sharp blade. Scully tried to hold her aim on him, but failed as one of the
accompanying robed men - acolytes? - slashed at the desk sergeant, opening
a vicious gash in his forehead, exposing pink-stained bone. Scully leapt
over the desk head-first as the other acolyte's sword nearly took her arm
off. She landed awkwardly, the gun jarring from her hand. With the agility
of desperation she lunged for it, and succeeded only in sending it
skittering into a corner.
There was a broom leaning on the filing cabinet.
It should not have been there. It should have been put away in a cupboard
somewhere. Scully resolved to arrange a pay rise for the lazy cleaner
who'd left it out, even as she snatched it up.
One of the Acolytes had cleared the desk, ignoring the blood-blinded
sergeant, and now swung his sword. She blocked with the broom handle : the
blade wedged in the wood and she kicked him in the side, felt a rib crack. He
lost his grip on the sword and she brought the end of the handle round in
a whistling arc, connecting with the side of the acolyte's head in a
splintering crack that snapped the wood. He fell to earth. Scully grabbed
her gun and went to the sergeant. She pressed a clean handkercheif to his
gushing forehead and took his nightstick. The other two were gone already.
She moved quickly and quietly into the connecting corridor.

An officer was doing his best to hold his intestines in. She could do
nothing for him. She ran onwards, light on her toes, watching corners. She
rounded a corner and ducked as a Scimitar embedded itself in the plaster.
She uncoiled from her crouch, going head-first into the
acolyte's chin and sending him staggering back.
"Federal Agent," She said, ignoring the stinging on her scalp, "Freeze."
The Acolyte shook his head quickly, trying to focus. He lunged at her and
she shot him in the leg. He staggered and hauled himself upright, reciting
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of
the selfish and the tyranny of evil men..."
She felt the frustration rising in her.
"Freeze!!! So much as blink and I'll shoot to kill!"
The Acolyte tried to get at his sword. She aimed, but closed her eyes as
she squeezed the  trigger.
The bullet passed cleanly through the Acolyte's forehead and spattered his
brains over the  wall behind him.
He fell to earth with an idiotic expression of surprise on his face.

There was a scream from further down the corridor and Scully broke into a
trot. When the body came out of the side-door, she snapped the nightstick
round to the combat position before she even registered the blood. The
leader came through the door just a second after she had flipped the stick
back into the ready position.
That turned out to be her saving grace. The sword, swung high and
double-handed, glanced off the stick lying along her forearm and, though
the force of the blow made something pop unpleasantly in her shoulder and
numbing shock race through her fingers, she snapped her right foot into
the stomach of the leader. As he doubled up she smashed the butt of her gun
down on the back of his head and he dropped, his right arm bending at an
unnatural angle.

Scully relaxed. For about fifteen seconds. She grabbed the radio from the
bloodied body even as her other hand searched for a pulse in its carotid
artery. Finding none, she quickly took his handcuffs and chained the
unconcious leader to a radiator. She clicked open the channel and spoke
"Agent Scully, FBI. Officers Down inside the station. Break out the riot
gear and get everyone  to full alert fast. We've got problems."
She clipped the radio to her belt and took the spare clips from the
officer's belt. As she  crouched there, she heard stealthy footfalls.

She got a better grip on the nightstick and readied her gun.

This was going to be a nightmare.

Mulder and his vampire assailant stared at one another across the
table. "My Origins, Mulder, are extremely expensive on the bargaining
front. What can you offer in return?"
"Access to the X-files. You fill me in on what's going on here, and I'll
get you to a source no-one else in America has. Stay one jump ahead of the
Brotherhood." Stefan gave one of his smiles. Teeth gleamed.
"I'm seeking a somewhat terminal solution to the Brotherhood problem. And
it's all tied up with my father-in-darkness." He paused, eyes flaring red.
"There are... certain things that are
part and parcel of this body you see, Mulder. I think you're going places.
It could hardly jeopardise the future of your own efforts to know what it
is you're facing."

"It begins with a young boy raised in an isolated backwoods russian
village. Born in nineteen-oh-eight, the son of a priest. When the
Revolution came, his father chose to flee with the boy,  West, into Europe.
The priest died getting the child across the border. But the boy was lucky
enough to fall in with a family of aristocrats who adopted the little
russian peasant boy as an  attraction, an example of barbarous russia. They
paid for his schooling. He turned out to be  quite bright. By his twentieth
birthday, he was putting the seal on a double doctorate in Medicine and in
European History.  He outgrew the Aristos and left them, leaving as a
token of his affection what was left of their daughter, on whom he had
conducted his first experiments. She was put to death by burning at the
stake. Even from the heart of the flames, she railed against her fate. It
was all terribly dramatic. I expect the boy would have loved it.

"Next, he vanished for two years. He changed his name and took up
residence in Germany, where he was on hand to provide medical assistance
to an injured Adolf Hitler after the failed 1933 putsch. Hitler let him
set up a clinic for experimenting with his newly-named science of
Lifecode Engineering. You and I know it as Eugenics. The boy, now a young
man, rapidly outgrew even Hitler's ambitions. When the threat of war
became very real, our hero decided it
was time to move on to pastures new. He fled across into France, where he
claimed to be a Jew hiding from Hitler's purges. He came into contact with a British army officer who had
some decidedly Fascistic ideas about the anglo-saxon race. from the unholy
alliance of the Masonic circles and the Military, was born the bastard
child of Doctor Temya D'Vorak, a project ostensibly designed to advance
human evolution into the next phase. What it created, instead, was what
you now see."
Mulder looked at the vampire intensely.
"You're a genetic experiment?"
"A military-funded, top secret, genetic experiment. Temya was working from
his fascination with the tales of the vampire when he laid out our genetic
blueprint. He meant us to be perfect soldiers to serve in his private
army. What he got was vampires, with all that goes with that.
The ultimate soldier's not a lot of use if he can only fight at night and
has to spend the  daylight hours in a UV-tight container."
"So is D'Vorak your 'father-in-darkness'?"
"Ohhh, yes. He personally sired all twenty pairs. He'd picked up an
obsession with twins from the Nazis along with their power hunger and
genocidal mania. Our mothers delivered us on April sixteenth, 1939, and
were ushered into a shower, where they were quietly gassed to
death. Four of the children were stillborn. One mother delivered a
monstrosity, a mangled mass of flesh that was killed instantly. Of the
surviving thirty, they killed eighteen of us experimenting with our limits
and abilities, and then a further two who were surplus to  requirements. I
was the highest scoring member of the ten left, I might add. The only field
where I fell down was control. Etienne, my sister, beat me at that. If
she's alive, she's doing a  better job of hiding than me.

"We were approaching our thirteenth birthday and almost fully grown when
D'Vorak vanished with about five hundred thousand in stolen money. The
project was quietly terminated and we were ordered killed. We defended
ourselves with all our training and ferocity. Six of us managed to make
safe refuge. One of us died in 1964, burnt to death by the sun. He
wouldn't have made that mistake. We began the hunt.

"It's been thirty years, now. We followed D'Vorak's trail through Europe,
always watching, always creeping closer. I learnt that he had been
resident in America for some time, at the Lichfield project. They disliked
his methods and threw him off. His parting gift was a duplicated
chromosome in the genetic makeup, resulting in-"
"Heightened Psychosis?"
The vampire smiled, just a tiny curl at the corner of the mouth.
"You've met some of the Eves."
"We had a run-in with them, yes." Mulder said.
"I tracked one of them across America for years. She was receiving
regualar parcels from someone, packages of drugs designed to control her
levels of agression. Someone was trying to get her to restart the
Lichfield project with a new genetic matrix, based on our original
design. Luckily, she never got past the first experiment using a more
advanced but still psychotic lichfield blueprint. She was too convinced of
her own intelligence : she thought she could correct the flaws on her own.
Anyway, I managed to back-track a parcel to a townhouse near here, but
Temya was long gone. Then I had my first brush with the Brotherhood of the
White Rose..."


--
+=======================================================================+
| []  "Stop! You are thinking muddily -   |
| Matt.R.Austin []   conduct ordinarily inexcusable! |
| M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk []   Now, youth, you will redeem |
| []   yourself by explaining this |
| []   phenomena to me!" |
| []    - Mentor of Arisia |
+=======================================================================+

From netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Tue Jan 31 11:56:26 1995
Path: netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin
From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (MR AUSTIN)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: GOTHIC, part IV/VII
Date: 29 Jan 1995 18:48:30 GMT
Organization: University of Bradford
Lines: 200
Message-ID: <3ggntu$bbb@columbia.acc.brad.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: muser-fddi.acc.brad.ac.uk
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


  X-files

   GOTHIC

Part IV - What Evil Lurks

Scully put the last of her bullets into the leg of a ranting acolyte and
went into a defensive stance with the nightstick. Her FBI training was
being tested to the limit and she found herself wishing she'd spent a few
more hours in the gym of late. She deflected a swordthrust aimed at her
shoulder. The acolyte was thrown off-balance for a moment and she whipped
the nightstick up, over and down onto the back of his head. He slammed to
the floor.

Her mind was busily assessing a dozen pieces of information - the
distorted echo of shotgun fire, the stance of a new acolyte, her own
laboured breathing, and so forth - when she picked out a slight rustling
and a small click behind her. She dived and rolled instinctively, and the
crossbow bolt tore through her jacket sleeve rather than her heart. She
heard the acolyte she had been facing give a shreik that ended in a
bubbling gurgle as the bolt punctured his lung. She twisted on her toes
and, seeing no alternative, charged headfirst at the crossbow-wielder. He
was trying to haul back the string for another shot, and the nightstick
butted up under his chin and sent him flying. At this rate she was going
to be up to her neck in bodies before -
The thunderous howl of a siren cut off the thought. From a Megaphone, she
heard welcome words.
"Attention! This is the SWAT team! We have the building surrounded! Throw
down your weapons!"

Scully made her way back to her prisoner, with a SWAT cop along for the
ride just in case. She found him slumped against the radiator, the cowl
drawn down over the face. He was muttering something and as they drew
nearer, she picked up a short burst of latin and had a horrible thought.
Even as she pulled back the cowl, he bit down, cutting through his own
tongue with his teeth. Bright fat jewels of blood spattered her face.
The SWAT cop took in a sharp breath.
"Suicide?" He asked, wonderingly.
"In the old Ninja style. Seppuku. With the tongue gone he'll bleed to
death in two minutes, and even if we could save him he couldn't talk to
us. Nasty. I should have realised. He was administering the last rites to
himself."
She wiped at her face with the sleeve of her jacket, feeling the fatigue
begin to spread through her body. She let her shoulders sag.

"Are you really vulnerable to religious artifacts?"
"Not in themselves, no. We're like a fine-tuned sports car. We go further,
faster, on less fuel. Our metabolism is highly resistant to disease, and
will heal even major wounds quickly and seamlessly. We're smarter,
stronger, more efficient. But with the powers, you accept the
responsibilities. Silver, even in microgram quantities, is poisonous.
Stick a silver blade in me and the small ammount entering my bloodstream
will kill me in minutes. Touching it hurts. Most religious artifacts are
precious metals : people fall back on superstition and symbolism when they
don't understand the science. As to a stake through the heart, well, the
heart and the brain are the only organs that aren't equipped for rapid
regeneration. And severing my head cleanly in one stroke would kill me the
same as it would anyone else. I can hardly regrow an entire head, or body.
Our eyes and skin are hypersensitive to ultraviolet light within a certain
frequency range. It causes catastrophic breakdown of cell integrity : we
literally  turn to dust."
"And you drink blood." Mulder hardly needed to ask. The sharp canines told
the whole story.
"Our blood contains no red blood cells. Oxygen is carried through the body
by a more complex system based on another transition metal. We have to
process that out using oxygenated human blood as a catalyst. It's not like
hunger or thirst : it's more like drug addiction. We call it the red
thirst. We can generally go about a week without blood, but after that the
craving gets more and more intense. The longer we go without blood, the
greater the temptation to tear someone apart and glut ourselves."
"You drank from the guy you killed in the library?"
"Not really. The hormones released at the moment of death taint the blood,
make it vile : it's like rotten meat. I couldn't keep it down."
Mulder considered the vampire for a moment.
"How did you get the false fax in here?"
"Part of our training in hypnotic suggestion. I got the cleaner to put it
in and then forget that she ever did it."
"So can you hypnotise potential victims."
The vampire shook his head.
"Hypnosis can never force a human mind into doing something that is
fundamentally against its instincts. You can't hypnotise someone into
murdering their best friend. You can't get someone to stand absolutely
still while you bleed them. We have a power to fascinate, however. We call
it frisson : but it's transitory and it works both ways. We can ensnare
them, but they ensare us back." The vampire stretched, exageratedly.
"I can hear Agent Scully returning."
Mulder listened, but could hear nothing.
"Believe me, Mulder. I can hear the slow settling of this building, the
tiny changes in stress in the beams as the people in the room above move
around. I can hear the engine running hot in her hurry. She believes you
to be in danger." "I believe I'm in danger."
"I'm a weapon, Mulder. I have a right end and a wrong end. You're not on
the right end. But let's just say that I'm not aimed at either of you." He
paused, grinned. The sharp canines were retracting. Mulder could hear the
car, now, skidding to a halt outs ide the room.
"I'll be seeing you, Mulder." The vampire said, and with a wave, he
sprang. He went through the window of the apparment in one headfirst leap,
landed on the bonnet of the car, and somersaulted over Scully, who was
scrambling from the car, gun in hand. He landed on his feet neatly and
flashed a smile over his shoulder. 
Scully stared at him-
and fell into his eyes. Her gun hand, swinging in an arc to target him,
slowed. For an interminable moment, the frisson held : neither able to
break their eye contact. Then the vampire blinked, and the moment passed.
He sprinted into the dark, vanishing into the blackness, drawing it around
him like a cloak. Scully shook herself. Mulder was standing in the doorway
of the appartment, framed against the dim light from within.
"What the hell was that!" She asked, voice filled with helpless frustration.
Mulder looked at her.
"He's not a friend. But I don't think he's our enemy either."

The black jaguar was speeding down the back roads. Stefan held held the
speedometer needle at ninety, but his mind was running faster.
He'd never, not even once, been locked that strongly to another person.
The mutual fascination had been so strong, he had felt the blood pumping
stickily through her veins, the strong, steady beats of her heart. He'd
heard Varden, the team's explosives expert, talk of the same thing : the
scene came back so sharp and clear that it almost blinded him-
they were running through the woods, feeling the thrill of the hunt
building like an electrical charge inside them, canines and claws out to
their fullest extent, sliding sinously around dripping treetrunks. The
whistle of the wind was a howling roar to their heightened hearing.
Etienne was swinging like an acrobat from the tree branches, lithe and
graceful in the silver light of the moon. Varden was at his side, eyes
blazing. They had fallen on their prey, feeling the fire of the red thirst
burning in every vein. When the soldiers had been disposed of, they had
begun the walk back to base feeling somehow cheated. The hunting had been
good, but the kill poor : their skills had hardly been excersised, let
alone tested. Varden had broken the silence with his tale.
"I am beginning to enjoy this too much." he had said, almost to himself.
When he had seen their expressions, he had continued.
"We are... special. We exceed our makers in every physical and mental
aspect, and yet we bow and curtsey to their bidding. I know you feel it.
When you run wild, like tonight, when you unsheathe these claws, when you
slake the red thirst, you feel the... righteousness of being vampyr."
Etienne had swung lightly down from the tree and landed in front of them,
feet a shoulder's width apart, hands held to her sides.
"We go no further until you get to the point, Varden."
"Have you ever looked so deeply into another's eyes that you look right
into their heart and see it beating there?"
"Never." Her voice was as cold and silvered as the moon.
"But you have felt the frisson."
And Stefan had chuckled, low and animal.
"There is a girl... when I look in her eyes, I'm inside her head. And
there's a heat in my chest and a pressure in my head and all I want to do
is drain her dry... and then make her one of us." He paused. "The Dark Kiss."
And Stefan had smiled. "Leave her be, Varden. We few are monsters enough
for the world to bear."

He shook his head as if to dislodge the memory. Varden was long gone, his
head taken from his shoulders by the Brotherhood of the White Rose three
years ago in North Carolina.
He wanted Scully. He imagined tipping back her head, his canines grating as
they extended, and gently piercing her skin at the pulsing vein, drinking
gently at her neck until her heart fluttered and she fell into shock,
descending rapidly into death. Then he would open one of his veins to her
and let her drink of him, binding them by blood beyond the grave, becoming
father- and daughter-in-darkness. The squeal of a car horn snapped him
frantically back to reality. He focussed with all of his fiery intens ity
on the road ahead and floored the accelerator.
Scully was having trouble holding her concentration. Mulder was on
the phone to someone, arguing loudly, but the words came to her as if
through cotton wool. Those eyes...
For a moment, she had felt as if she was inside him looking out. She had
felt the sheer power of him, the raw, barely-controlled animal fire in his
soul... and a vague sensation of a duality in his mind... no, not exactly
a duality... more as if a rational, human mind suffered the intrusions of
a predatory, primal urge.
"Scully!"
She jumped. Mulder was looking at her with an expression of concern on his
face.
"Sorry." she said, automatically. "I was..." She tailed off, unwilling to
say daydreaming.  "Thinking about our visitor." he prompted.
"Yes," She said, glad suddenly to have someone solid and familiar near
her. "Those eyes..." she shuddered.
"Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of mens
bodies?" He said, with a small smile.
She looked at him with her best run-that-by-me-again face.
He smiled, just a little. "Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene iii. What
Shakespeare said about musical instruments goes just as well for the eyes.
They're nothing more than two roughly spherical globes of white gristle,
but the judgements we make about a person by observation of their eyes are
incredibly complex."
"I don't know what judgement to make on him, Mulder. It wasn't like just
looking at him... It was almost as if I was inside him."
Mulder looked at her.
"Keep talking like that, and you'll be as spooky as me."
She laughed, but her mind was elsewhere. Her mind was racing through the
darkness with a vampire at her side.

--
+=======================================================================+
| []  "Stop! You are thinking muddily -   |
| Matt.R.Austin []   conduct ordinarily inexcusable! |
| M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk []   Now, youth, you will redeem |
| []   yourself by explaining this |
| []   phenomena to me!" |
| []    - Mentor of Arisia |
+=======================================================================+


From netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Tue Jan 31 11:56:27 1995
Path: netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin
From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (MR AUSTIN)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: GOTHIC, part V/VII
Date: 29 Jan 1995 18:48:53 GMT
Organization: University of Bradford
Lines: 223
Message-ID: <3ggnul$bbb@columbia.acc.brad.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: muser-fddi.acc.brad.ac.uk
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


   X-files

   GOTHIC

Part V - The Greater Dark.

In his secured chamber, Stefan raged. He had thrown himself into his
excersizes with blood rage still tinting his judgement. When his fifth
blow had ripped the target dummy's head off, he had realised the extent of
his fury.
He was a man, not a beast. He was a tactical seducer, not a rampant libertine.
He spat at his reflection in the mirror. His own white blood was threaded
through it.
He must calm himself.
I will have you steaming at my feet before the week is out, Temya, he
swore to his reflection. I will wipe your stain from the surface of the
earth.
But then, he thought, what shall I live for?

Mulder was in overdrive. The phone had been kept hot the whole morning
through. He slumped down in a chair.
"I got them to admit that D'Vorak worked on the Lichfield project. And
here's another thing : No-one is even willing to talk about where he might
be, or even if he exists."
Scully was still drifting, but that kicked her squarely in her sense of
reality.
"Current?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. If he's still trying for super-soldiers,
you can see the attraction for the military. But with what Stefan told me
about his previous methods for disposing of unfortunate alliances, I think
they might have more problems than they think. I've got to go look up... a
couple of contacts. If a couple of local police keep an eye out for you,
do you mind staying here alone tonight?"
"Not really." She said, not really thinking about the moment.
"Scully, this isn't like you. I think you need some sleep."
"Yeah, probably." She realised just how tired she was. The light hurt her
eyes.

When Scully had gone to have a shower, Mulder picked up the phone and
dialled a long number. The phone rang four times and he hung up.
Two minutes later, the phone trilled. Mulder picked it up.
"Agent Mulder."
"I've a seat booked on the midday flight into D.C. We need to discuss a-"
"Not on an open line. I'll see you in D.C this evening."
The man on the other end hung up the phone.
Halfway between, in a darkened room lit only by the phosphor glow of a
monitor, a man turned and signalled to his superior.
"Mulder just called out for assistance from his contact."
His superior pursed her lips.
"He's after D'Vorak."
"Are you certain we can't touch his contact?"
"The orders come from up top. Do your best to hold Mulder in D.C.
for as long as possible. But nothing overt : we can't risk any public
exposure yet."
"Acknowledged. If we get a chance, do we close Mulder's option?"
"No. We have our orders on that, too. The less damage we have to cause..."
"You don't need to tell me."
"Oh yes I do. Now. Get to it."
The man sighed and picked up the green phone. The receiver buzzed.
"This is a recording. State your name and message, and then hang up."
"Comm Op Ryan, David H. Situation critical. Recommend flagging Mulder,
Fox, FBI agent, as Amber-1. Relocation of subject vital." He dropped the
phone on the cradle.

Mulder's plane touched down in D.C. at 2:39. He was just wondering where
he was going to meet his contact when a car pulled up with the passenger
side towards him.
"Get in, Agent Mulder." came a familiar voice.
Mulder climbed into the car. His contact was at the wheel. The engine
purred smoothly up the scale as it pulled away.
"Well, Mulder, you certainly know how to make an enemy. Someone is making
some very obvious moves towards you."
"Are we in danger?"
"Physical danger, yes. Political? Not as such. The Nightwing project is
proving unfavourable with certain key figures."
"So D'Vorak has restarted his vampire project."
"I cannot confirm that. But let's say he had accheived considerable
advances in the field of Genetics over the last few years."
"What can you confirm."
"Almost Nothing, Agent Mulder. Only this. You must have spoken with the...
other interested party. And Agent Scully has firsthand experience of the
Brotherhood. Which would you trust in a tight spot?"
"Neither."
The man smiled. "That's probably safest. But I would say to you : when
your back is to the wall, be prepared to take it on trust."
"What do you know about the Nightwing project." Mulder pressed.
"It is subsidised by the Military. Politicians - those aware of its
existence - want it closed down. That is the extent of my knowledge.
However, I might be able to give you... a few leads."
"I'd appreciate that." Mulder nodded.
The man passed him an envelope.
"Memorise that and then burn it. I haven't seen the contents. I hope you
understand that that is to protect myself, not you."
Mulder opened the envelope and read the brief set of instructions on it.
He put the paper in the ashtray of the car and applied the glowing coil of
the lighter to it. The paper quickly caught and was consumed.
"This conversation never took place, Agent Mulder. But I will say this :
many people would be very pleased if the Nightwing Project was closed
down. Pleased enough to protect certain people from the accumulated
backlog of their past indiscretions. Goodbye."
Mulder alighted from the car as it came to a stop. It glided away almost
immediately he had closed the door.

Scully was flicking idly through their accumulated information, but her
mind seemed disengaged from her body. She was thinking of something
distant... whether it was a memory or not seemed unclear. Perhaps it was a
dream, resurfacing from her subconcious. She was dreaming of a darkened
room. In it sat a figure at once repulsive and attractive, a red-eyed
demon that whispered softly to her. She stretched, almost feeling
the feather touch of cool breath on her ear.
"But the captain had quitted the long-drawn strife,
and in far Simoorie had taken a wife.

And she was a damsel of delicate mould,
with hair like the sunshine and heart of gold.

And little she knew that the arms that embraced
had cloven a man from the brow to the waist,

And little she knew that the loving lips
had ordered a trembling life's eclipse,

And the eyes that lit at her lightest breath
had glared un-awed at the Gates of Death.

(For these be things a man would hide,
as a general rule, from an innocent bride.)"

She saw the eyes glowing in the dark. Then the robed figure of an acolyte
filled her vision and she sat up sharply, gasping in a lungful of air in
shock.
She was alone.
The blinds were down on the windows, for some reason she couldn't
remember. Mulder had lowered them, she recalled, but why, she could not
say. The room was in a kind of half-light, giving her an odd sensation of
lost time. She checked her watch to make sure. It was still only 3:05.
She wondered what Mulder would be doing now.

Mulder was returning to the airport at that precise moment. He slipped
easily through a small crowd on the sidewalk and darted across the road to
cut through to the terminal.
Then he froze.
A face was staring up at him, the face of a young girl who stood alone and
motionless as the people hurried past. A rational corner of his mind said
it couldn't be her, it couldn't be.
It was his sister, almost exactly as she had been on the night she had been
taken.
She extended her arm, pointed at him accusingly.
"Fox!" she said in a voice full of hate.
Then she turned and was gone.
Mulder ran after her.

She ducked into a side alley and Mulder followed her, running blindly. She
was ahead of him-
He tripped over something and fell headlong to the floor. When he looked
up, he saw her disappearing around a corner. He scrambled to his feet and
ran after her, aware of a dull pain in his ribs. When he burst out onto
another main street, he saw her again - her back turned to him. He lunged
and caught her by the shoulder, spun her around.
The girl was similar, without a doubt. The hair and eyes were the same
colour. But there were too many differences for Fox to ignore. And yet
she'd called his name-
She was screaming, now, and suddenly a fist rammed into his kidneys. He
gasped in shock, tried to step out of the way. The girl was screaming for
her father - who, Mulder suddenly realised, was the one who had just
slugged him.
"Pervert!" spat the father.
"FBI-" Mulder began
"And I'm Tinkerbell." the other said, before landing a blow that sent the air
out of Mulder. The third and fourth blows swet mulder's head ringing and
he staggered back from the fifth. The sixth never landed : at that moment,
a police cruiser rounded the corner with lights blazing and siren on. The
other man froze, and Mulder collapsed. He drifted out of conciousness as
he heard one of the cops say, close to his ear, "Better haul 'em both in."

When he came round, he was in the drunk tank. He could tell by the smell
of rancid puke.
"Well, you've really put yourself in it this time." he said to himself. He
looked around. His only companion was a wino who was lying on his side in
a pool of something that was probably the reason for the place's
individual smell.
Mulder rearranged himself more comfortably and checked his pockets.
Everything was gone, including his wallet containing his FBI badge. He
tried to feel how badly bruised his jaw was, but one bit felt much like
another. He found the buzzer and rang it in two short bursts. About a
minute later, a slouching cop with a beer gut came through.
"I want to ask that someone in authority here is shown my wallet and its
contents."
The sloucher looked at him for a moment and then burst out laughing.
"Your cash is safe with me, pal. Wait for your interview."
"I'm a Federal Agent. Fox Mulder, assigned right here in D.C. Call the
Beaueau if you don't believe me, or check my wallet for the badge, but I'm
on a case right now and my partner may be in trouble if I'm detained too
long. And while you're at it, could you ask the station paramedic to come
check me out?"
The cop loooked at him again, as if memorising him for future reference.
"I'll check your wallet, pal, but no promises."
He left for a moment, but Mulder heard him open a filing cabinet and
ruffle through files. Then there was a short silence. The telephone was
picked up and buttons pushed : The cop asked for confirmation of an agent
and gave Mulder's FBI number. There was another short silence and the
cradle was jiggled. The cop dialled a three digit number and spoke
animatedly with someone about locking up a fed. He was hardly surprised,
then, when moments later, two suited officers entered the room and
escorted him apologetically to the medic.

It was nearly seven when they finally put him on a flight to Jefferson
City. He was thoroughly aware that darkness would soon be falling over
Missouri.

Scully drifed into sleep, and dreamed of vampires.


--
+=======================================================================+
| []  "Stop! You are thinking muddily -   |
| Matt.R.Austin []   conduct ordinarily inexcusable! |
| M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk []   Now, youth, you will redeem |
| []   yourself by explaining this |
| []   phenomena to me!" |
| []    - Mentor of Arisia |
+=======================================================================+


From netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Tue Jan 31 11:56:27 1995
Path: netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin
From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (MR AUSTIN)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: GOTHIC, part VI/VII
Date: 29 Jan 1995 18:49:21 GMT
Organization: University of Bradford
Lines: 291
Message-ID: <3ggnvh$bbb@columbia.acc.brad.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: muser-fddi.acc.brad.ac.uk
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


        X-Files
GOTHIC

Part VI - Curtain up

The figures in the woods moved quietly, but Stefan heard them all the
same. He admired their discipline, their training. They knew what they
were doing even in their robes. He was tempted to take one or two,
silently and quickly, just to highlight their weak points. But not until
he knew why the Brotherhood of the White Rose were creeping through woods
like common theives. One of the brotherhood passed underneath his hiding
place in the trees and he smiled. He was a stalker tonight, a thing of
great and fearful power.
"Tiger, Tiger, Burning bright!
In the jungles of the night!
Oh what fearful hand and eye
crafts your perfect symetry!"
He knew what Blake had been writing about. He was a human tiger, crafted
from the dreams of a madman and let loose on an unsuspecting world. He
waited still, watching until they were all ahead.
He sprung from his branch with barely a rustle, cleared thirty feet of
empty air and caught the next treebranch. He chinned himself up one-handed
and squatted in the branches, watching the Brotherhood.
From here, he had an idea what they might be up to. They were carrying two
long lengths of wood and converging on the motel.
He cursed and scrambled down from the tree, darting silently closer to the
group. They were on the patch of waste ground behind the room where he had
held his interview with Mulder. He held to the shadows, circling slowly to
try to get a better view. They had snapped the two pieces of wood together
and raised the resultant cross upright. Already flames were licking around
the wood near the base. The wood was charred badly now : the wood had been
soaked in petrol, and the fires burned higher. Soon the whole cross was
ablaze, with the brotherhood arranged round it in a loose circle.

They each took a torch from a pile and lit them from the cross, and Stefan
had a horrible feeling he was going to have to intervene before long.
He detested that. The more he fought these fanatics, the more they came to
know him, know his style and his petty flaws. A petty flaw could become a
crack, and a crack a chasm, if an intelligent enemy learned to exploit it.
They might even be exploiting him now : trying to draw him into a conflict
he could not hope to win on any reasonable basis. He might whittle them
down, one by one, with careful and circumspect moves, but not take all of
them in one. That would be impossible. Where the hell was Mulder when you
really needed him, he thought bitterly. And what was Scully doing in
there, sleeping on the job? America's finest were all too easy to fool
when you'd trained for the ultimate challenge : daily survival in a
hostile world. Someone had been training the Brotherhood.

The house in the swamp had once belonged to a man made rich on the back of
tobacco growing. But the swamp had clawed its way back toward the house,
and the owner had been forced to leave ahead of an army of Union soldiers
moving triumphantly south. Now the house was sagging, its brickwork
damaged and crumbled by the years.

A casual observer might have noticed odd lights at odd hours within the
old house, but would probably thought nothing of it. A more experienced
eye would have noticed the tripwires, cameras, and infra-red equipment
built into hiding places in the twisted trees, and they would have
definitely thought something of such high-security measures being fitted
to a ruined house. And anyone would have noticed the olive-green truck
arriving on the only good road, its wide tyres biting deep for grip in the
soft muck.

The truck hissed to a halt, and a sharp-faced woman in an insignialess
military uniform climbed down, a beret cap tucked through her epaulette
and a glinting sidearm in her holster. She went to the door and pounded on
it, her face full of anger.
A robed figure answered the door and ushered her inside.
"I want Brother Temya here now. I must speak with him immediately."
The Acolyte did not protest : the military had called on Temya before, and
he had received them without rancour.
He tapped lightly on Brother Temya's study. The door creaked open just a
crack, and the acolyte saw an eye gleaming dully in the light from the
corridor.
"Tell her I will join her in a moment, Brother, when I have finished my
dedications." He said, and re-entered the room. If the acolyte had stayed
by the door, listening, he might have heard Temya throttle the young boy
who had been brought to him silently in the night. But he was hurrying
away from the room when the dull wet noise that the boy's neck made
sounded inside the study, and so he heard nothing.

Temya D'Vorak had resumed a peaceful mein when he stepped into the main
room of the house to revceive his guest. He wore his Brotherhood robes
over skin as dry and cracked as ancient parchment. He looked, in truth,
like a walking human skeleton. His muscles had wasted to the point of
appearing almost non-existant : his skin was so thin that it was almost
translucent to light. He looked like a spectre of death.
"An FBI agent named-" Began the  military woman, but Temya cut her off.
"Fox Mulder has made discoveries that may compromise project Nightwing. I
have several Brothers dealing with the problem."
"Mulder's a serious problem. I want the project relocated immediately."
"Your caution is all well and good, but certain... recent developments
force me to stay here. An old friend has resurfaced and must be destroyed
before he can jepoardise my continued work. Have you completed your work
on the weapons?"
"They're ready. But they're not tested and they're single-shot. You are
ordered to relocate."
"I will not move now. You will take your men and set up UV floodlights
around the house, distribute guards, any steps you feel necessary. But I
will be rid of this irritation before I relocate. I detest loose ends :
they lie around and people trip over them."
"If you refuse to relocate now, the Anti-Nightwing lobby may succeed in
shutting the project down. They already have most of the votes they need :
your blank refusal to follow orders may provide them with the ammunition
they need to get you put out of business."
Temya dismissed her statement with a wave of his hand.
"One way or another, it will be decided tonight. Order your troops to
their stations."

Stefan really detested having to fight in the open. He had taken three
brothers silently, leaving their cooling corpses behind him, but the
fourth had raised the alarm and the others were splitting into two groups
: one to torch the motel room, one to hunt him down. He had to prevent
the group at the room first : the others he could whittle down on his own
terms.
He emerged from the woods at a run and took the battle to them.
The first brother fell to a flying kick that broke his back, and the melee
was joined.
Scully had stirred from dreams of hunting in the woods to see the figures
in the light of the burning cross. She was hardly surprised to find the
phone lines down : Her Mobile was in the car, stupidly. She had her gun,
though : she had just blown the kneecap out of a torch-wielding brother
when the vampire broke cover and took down another. She heard bone crunch
as the vampire hit him in the small of the back with both feet. A Scimitar
swung for the vampire's head.
Time slowed as her reflexes went into panic mode. Who to shoot? The
brother or the beast?
The doubt passed quickly. Her shot left red spreading across the brother's
robes from a stomach wound. The Vampire exploded out of his crouch,
knocking the brother flying into the wall. Back on his feet, the vampire
flashed her a small smile.
They formed up, back to back.
The Vampire took the head from a charging brother with an economical
swipe. With all his speed and agility, he twitched the sword from the
brother's hand and reversed it, plunging it daggerstyle into the chest of
the next brother.
Scully saw the crossbow brother taking aim and dropped him with a bullet
in the leg. The Vampire had foresaken the sword in the chest of the
brother he had just killed and stood, lightly balanced, hands at his
sides. Scully recognised the martial arts training in the stance.
"Well, Gentlemen," The vampire said, teeth flashing in the light of the
burning cross, "I suppose I had to get my hands dirty sometime."
He leapt toward them and they scattered like panicked sheep.
A body flew from the melee. It hit the ground in two seperate places and
Scully, for all her medical training, had to fight to keep the contents of
her stomach down. The brothers hacked and slashed at the vampire, with
fanatical zeal but little skill. Their broad swipes would have felled a
horse : but in the midst of them pale flesh darted and slashed with
anatomical precision. For a second, he sprang into the air, turning
through a bloodied arc with his claws biting deeply into screaming
brethren. The vampire had the skills of a master and the experience of a
lifetime. The brothers stood no chance.

At length only one figure remained standing in the courtyard, a
bloody-handed avatar of destruction surrounded by the bodies of the
fallen. He was breathing heavily, and the swords had bitten deep in
places. Already she could see the pale flesh closing, wounds knitting
seamlessly leaving unmarked, flawless skin as pale as the moonlight.
He staggered towards her, collapsed breifly. She went to him, helped him
to his feet.
"Stefan," he managed around laboured breaths.
"Dana." She replied.
"I seem to be having a devilish time with my legs," he remarked mildly,
and keeled over again. There was a deep gash across his spine. In a human,
Dana would have pronounced the wound mortal. Here, she had no idea.
"Will you live?" she asked, realising how foolish this would sound.
He grinned. His fangs gleamed.
"If you call this living. I'll survive. It's what I was designed and
trained for, after all."
"Can I do anything to help you recover?"
"About a pint of oxygenated blood would put me back on my feet," he said,
his breathing subsiding to normal.
Dana paused. The moment was charged with a deep sensuality. She reached to
her collar and toyed with the button there.
"Not yours." His voice was bitter. "I would not demean you so. I'll find
something else."
She undid the button, her resolve suddenly strong.
"You need it soon to survive, am I right?"
Stefan nodded.
"Then take what's offered and don't be so stupid."
Stefan hauled himself into a kneeling position, facing her.
"Dana..." he began.
"Do it." She cut him off, her voice a little shaky. The air was sweet in
her lungs. She waited for the touch of his teeth at her neck, feeling
light headed.
The red thirst had its claws in her too, Stefan realised. The hunter and
the hunted shared the bond of blood, drawing just a little of each other
from it, growing stronger inside from the moment of trial.
He leaned forward and kissed her gently. With one hand he tipped her head
away from her throat, seeing the strong steady pulses in the vein.
With his teeth, he cut her as lightly as possible, letting the blood well
at the cut of its own time, not wanting to break the moment. The first
drops rolled over his tounge and he felt warmth inside, the warmth and the
intoxicating rush of the slaked thirst.
This was the dangerous moment. The temptation was always so strong to let
the thirst take control, to surrender conciousness fully to the beast
within. Each time he fed, it was a fight : a fight to stay as a human
fulfilling a need, rather than becoming an animal killing for pleasure. He
swallowed again, feeling the fires coming alight inside.
Only when they fed did they truly live. While stolen blood pulsed for
those solitary seconds, they were alive again, briefly freed from the
chains of the grave.
"Dana!!!"
Stefan swore under his breath, and bit down deliberately on his tounge. He
placed a drop of his blood at Scully's cut, knowing the skin would heal,
and sprinted into the darkness.
Mulder ran to Dana's side. She was swaying, her eyes half closed.
He scooped her up and took her inside, even as the police fanned out
across the ground to walk amongst the carnage.

Mulder's face swam into focus over her, and she tried to raise a hand to
touch it.
"Easy, now." The voice was warm, flavoured with a southern drawl. "You've lost
about three quarters of a pint of blood. You'll feel a little light headed.
Does she smoke?"
"No." That was Mulder's voice.
"Well, just in case : no smoking for two hours, no drinking advised for
twenty-four. She'll be okay, though : the blood transfusion service take
more. The disorientation seems to be caused by... oh, I don't know. It
could be the small levels of Copper and Nickel in the blood. It could just
be that she's tired. I never seen anything like it."
"Could it be hypnosis?"
"Doubtful. Pupil reaction times would suggest either mild exhaustion or
alkaloid abuse. Otherwise, she's fine."
The room was sharpening, now. Her focus was improving.
"Been smoking pot, Scully?" Mulder asked, an anxious smile on his face.
"Not likely." She managed. "I could use a glass of water, though. Or
better yet a good strong coffee."

She sat up in bed and stirred the coffee, feeling everything with the
freshness of new experience.
"How do you feel?"
She took a sip from the coffee to delay her answer.
"A hundred and fifty percent alive. It's like everything's new, Mulder :
It's all brighter, sharper..."
"I want you to do some genetic material tests."
She laughed."I think this has driven you out of your mind? You've got to be
mad if you think-"
"I don't think, I know. Stefan's a genetic experiment : it's highly probable
that he reproduces by altering the genetic material of his victim."
Scully took another sip from her coffee.
"What the hell were you thinking of? I get back to the house with the cops
and you're kneeling on the ground with Stefan tapping your throat!"
"I can't explain it, Mulder."
He smiled, a little thinly.
"I suppose I should thank our vampire. I never thought I'd live to hear
you say that. Now drink up and rest. I've got phone calls to make."
She leaned back, watched him leave.
There was a tap at the window.
She looked up and saw Stefan, his eyes gleaming. The cup slipped from her
hand and hit the floor, splashing coffee across the linoleum.
The window slid open silently and he entered, landing with catlike grace
on the floor.
"I came to thank you." He said in a voice edged with uncertainty.
She realised that she must have looked shocked when she saw him.
"It was nothing," she replied automatically.
He laughed, low and bitter.
"Oh, it was certainly something to me. I came to ask one more favour of
you-" He stiffened, suddenly, moved to the door.
When Mulder entered, Stefan masked his body with the door. When Mulder
moved to Scully's side, He slammed it shut.
Mulder pulled his gun.
"Come on, Mulder. You don't seriously expect me to be frightened of that?"
"I expect anyone to have a healthy respect for firearms."
"Your average run-of-the-mill psycho killer? Probably, yes. Me? Not a
hope. You, me and Dana are going to have a little talk about Temya."

In the mansion, the military woman lifted a metal case onto the table and
snapped up the latches. Inside nestled a Nightwing Project Firebrand, a
small pistol-sized weapon with a wide barrel. It was a short range,
one-handed, HE warhead tipped rocket launcher. The tiny rocket would
penetrate about two inches before exploding, utterly disintegrating the
torso of its target. Only twenty were in existance. The others she had
distributed amongst the soldiers, with careful instructions to seek cover
after firing. The weapons were untried in a combat environment,
particularly one as confined as this. She checked that the safety was on
and slid it into a holster.
And if anything goes wrong tonight, she thought, I'm saving this for you,
Temya D'Vorak.


--
+=======================================================================+
| []  "Stop! You are thinking muddily -   |
| Matt.R.Austin []   conduct ordinarily inexcusable! |
| M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk []   Now, youth, you will redeem |
| []   yourself by explaining this |
| []   phenomena to me!" |
| []    - Mentor of Arisia |
+=======================================================================+


From netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin Tue Jan 31 11:56:28 1995
Path: netnews.upenn.edu!news.cc.swarthmore.edu!psuvax1!news.pop.psu.edu!news.cac.psu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!warwick!bradford.ac.uk!mraustin
From: M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk (MR AUSTIN)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: GOTHIC, part VII/VII
Date: 29 Jan 1995 18:50:01 GMT
Organization: University of Bradford
Lines: 343
Message-ID: <3ggo0p$bbb@columbia.acc.brad.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: muser-fddi.acc.brad.ac.uk
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


X-files
GOTHIC

Part VII - Last Act.

The striplights overhead made him itch, but he persevered. Mulder must
have remembered his comments during their interview, though : he clicked
off the ceiling light and turned on the bedside lamp. The knives of pain
receeded to needles, and the needles to a vague and ignorable rawness to
his skin. He nodded thanks to Mulder even as he waited.
"What makes you so sure that Temya is nearby?" Mulder asked.
"That Cross. The brotherhood are really steamed about it. I talked to a
local antiquities nut and he mentioned a church in Poland in 1938. Temya
would have had access to the Nazi War-spoils, and he always had a thing
for rubies."
"Why Rubies, in particular?" That was Scully.
"According to old legends, the rubies are the crystallised blood of the
old Earth Gods of Eastern Europe. I'm talking way back, here, not just
middle ages. Temya has an obsession with the legends of primitive cultures."
The phone trilled, and Mulder picked it up.
"Agent Mulder, you are causing me considerable problems. Please tell me
this is worthwhile."
"He's here."
"Very well, let me speak with him."
Mulder handed the phone to Stefan.
"So you finally surfaced, Stefan," the man on the other end of the line
said, quietly.
"I'm afraid that I found myself unable to follow your excellent advice,
sir." Stefan replied, evenly.
"Who did you call, Mulder?" Scully whispered, but Mulder silenced her with
a cautious wave of his hand.
"You and your friends, Stefan, would be well advised to drop out of sight
and never appear again."
"Sadly, I must decline. Tell me where he is."
"If I do tell you, it will mean an end to our arrangement. If brought to
book on this, I will deny all knowledge of your existence."
"I wouldn't have it any other way. Where is Temya."
"You will face considerable danger from the Project Nightwing staff and
the Brotherhood members he has in location."
"I can handle anything they can throw at me. You know that. Now. Where is
Temya?" Stefan's voice took on a steely edge.
"He's about thirty miles southwest of your present location. I'll provide
directions."
For a minute, Stefan took dictation, scribbling notes hurriedly on the
courtesy pad from the bedside.
"From here on in, you are on your own." The man on the phone concluded.
"As always. I believe it will be in your best interest to play down
certain questions to the government at an appropriate time?"
"I'm glad we understad each other. I will protect myself from damaging
speculation : that it protects you is a side-effect, nothing more."
"And I hope you understand me. I will remain neutral unless moves are made
towards myself or my kind. If such moves are made, I will bring all my
powers to bear on your establishment. You have had one object lesson
already : it was your last warning."
Stefan tossed the handset to Mulder, tore off the top sheet of the pad,
and left by the window.
Mulder grabbed the pad and, with his swiss-army knife, began scraping the lead
from a pencil onto the surface of the sheet. With the phone pinned between
shoulder and ear, he muttered into the mouthpiece. "I saw Samantha today."
"You saw a young girl called Andie Marber, made up to look like your
sister. Project Nightwing staged the whole thing to distract you."
Mulder was suddenly aware of how bad he must smell after his time in the
tank. He grinned ruefully. "I'd say that they did a very thorough job of
it. Remind me to thank them."
"Agent Mulder, don't ask me to give you Temya's location and don't go
there after the vampire. You will be exposing yourself to unnecessary risk."
"I don't need the first and I'll be damned if I'll let it end here."
He shook the pad gently and took a brief second to memorise the directions
now showing on the surface of the sheet. At least Stefan had a clear,
precise and firm hand : the imprint showed up clearly. He crumpled the
paper.
"I admire your courage, Agent Mulder. You and I will speak again in the
future, I suspect."
"I would hope so. Goodbye." Mulder dropped the handset into the cradle.
"We going somewhere, Mulder?"
"I am. You're staying here."
"No. It's just a little blood loss : I'll be fine."
"I know why they say that doctors make the worst patients. If you're going
to be anywhere I suppose it'd better be with me. Get ready while I whistle
up some firepower."

Stefan was racing through the night, the big Jaguar's racing-tuned engine
barely audible, even with the supercharger running. He was an unstoppable
force now, his sights locked onto the target, finger tightening on the
trigger.
I've got you now, Temya, he thought. I will have you dead at my feet ere
daybreak or I will die in the attempt. Tonight it ends.

His mind was clear and sharp as he approached the house. He pulled the
Jaguar to a halt in a layby and opened the boot. Inside, next to his
sleeping mat, lay a case of scuffed leather. Under the leather was a
casket of high-tensile steel, sealed with a lock that had been designed to
elude the world's best picklocks. He snapped it open and removed the
sections of the high-powered rifle from heir resting places. In four
minutes he had assembled the Enfield "Savage" .303 and adjusted the
sights. The original model had been a superb hunter's weapon : after his
modifications, it could throw a modified .375 Magnum round nearly a
kilometer without any problem. The rounds were Keith semi-wadcutters, designed
to go through armour but expand in flesh. He ran a critical eye over the
weapon to check the alignment and then vanished into the trees.

Mulder hated automatic weapons.
The Heckler & Koch he'd been supplied with by the SWAT team looked
unpleasantly capable of going off unannounced. It always struck him as
stupid that they went in such overwhelming force to catch petty criminals.
It only encouraged their targets to fire back. But not tonight. Tonight he
would have happily accepted a missile launcher and a small tactical nuke.
Force was a necessity here. Scully cradled a similar pistol, and had a
pump-action fifteen gauge slung over her shoulder. She looked grimly
determined, and he wondered at the change in her. She looked ready to take
on the world.

He found a superb vantage point in a tree, overlooking the western side of
the house. There were four UV spotlights on towers, covering the whole
ground. He pulled on a pair of black leather gloves, tucking them well
into his cuff, and then pushed his head into a tight-fitting hood. UV filter
lenses fitted neatly over his eyes, a removable patch of material covered
his mouth. He was invisible in the dark, and protected from the mild
spillage from the lights. He cleared the breech of the Enfield and located
the incendiary rounds in his bandolier. One in the generator should take
out the whole array. He loaded three standard rounds and two indcendiaries
as a precaution, slipping the magazine home and checking it was seated
cleanly. A second five-round magazine was lying on the branch, loaded with
semi-wadcutters and waiting for emergencies.
Not yet. He wanted to be sure.

Temya sat in the main room and sipped from a delicate eggshell china cup.
A crossbow was at his side, and two Brothers waited at the entrances,
Brothers wearing the embroidered armband of Temya's personal death squad.
Their blades were japanese in design, sharper than european blades and
better balanced.

Temya waited.

Mulder saw the Jaguar and slammed on the brakes.

The noise reached Stefan, who smiled thinly under the hood.

Now.

The first incendiary punched clean through the wall of the fuel tank and
the night came alive with fire. The next drew a line of light to the chest
of a Brother with a crossbow, who burst into flames and fell. The next
three rounds found their marks also, and the second magazine was locked
and loaded in a moment. The silenced muzzle spat five more times, and five
more fell. Stefan leapt from the tree and ran, claws and teeth extending
in anticipation.

Scully saw the spreading fires from the explosion a second before Mulder.
She clicked open the radio and called to the SWAT team.
"We're here. Cover the outside thoroughly before you move in."
There was a brief acknowledgement and the radio fell silent.

Inside the house, chaos raged. Stefan had taken a second to put a
screwdriver across a lightbulb fitting and the main fuses had tripped. In
the darkness, he was in his element : a stumbling brother had his neck
snapped, a more confident mover was rewarded with a swift strike to the
throat that crushed his trachea and left him choking.

When the lights failed, the soldiers barely missed a beat. They had
expected this tactic. From their belts they drew light-amplification
goggles and slipped them on.
The sudden burst of gunfire outside was not expected.

The SWAT team moved in almost choreographed precision, covering each other
perfectly as they closed on the house. The acolytes of the Brotherhood
were cut down with gunfire as they ran from the house. The noose tightened.

Temya sat calmly in the main room and sipped the last few drops from the
cup. He laid the stained china to one side and stretched, feeling
long-unused muscles coming back to life.
His eyes were alight with fire.

The first soldier that Stefan encountered came close to killing him. The
soldier fired a wide-muzzled weapon in his general direction and the
subsequent explosion came close to spearing Stefan's heart with shrapnel.
He ripped open the soldier's stomach and left him to gag on his own
blood.
From then on, it became a real fight. He took the soldiers out one by one,
taking his time. He was just finishing off another nameless man in green
when he heard the click of an pistol action behind him. A bullet passed
clean through his chest, in the location of his heart. He shuddered
briefly, but the skin was already healing around the wound. He turned to
see a sharp-faced woman in a classic shooting crouch.
"Nice try," He said, drily, "wrong calibre."
He pounced on her and she screamed even as his claws found her throat.

The SWAT team had broken in by now, dispersing rapidly through the house.
Scully followed them in, sure-footed even in the darkness, moving quietly
through the corridors. Here and there they found evidence of Stefan's
work. The air was thick with the smell of blood and fear.
Mulder tried to follow Scully, but he tripped over rubble and lost her
around a corner.

The two brothers condsidered Stefan for a moment before shifting for the
attack. Stefan had discarded the hood, and he smiled at them as they
readied themselves. The one on the right was used to a european
broadsword : he had no finesse, and would be easy. The left hand one, on
the other hand, showed the balance and poise of someone well-trained in
Kendo. He would strike to the three target areas of Kendo first and
foremost. He circled, watching for traits. The broadsword-trained one
would swing high for preference, while the more experiencd one would keep
his style limited to stabbing thrusts, taking advantage of the enclosed space.

The broadsword-trained Brother lost his patience and his head in rapid
succession. Clutching his newly aquired Katana, Stefan circled the
remaining man with easy grace. Two of the Brother's attacks were almost
casually turned aside, but Stefan's counterstroke nearly took the
Brother's left hand from him. The brother shifted his stance for defensive
advantage. Stefan obliged him with a rapid flurry of strikes, landing a
boot in the brother's stomach and scraping his ribs with a thrust. The
brother backed away before the assault and tripped on the corpse of the
fallen brother. His balance was good : he nearly recovered. But Stefan
pressed his advantage and thrust the tip through the brother's heart.
For a second, Stefan paused. But his goal was close. He kicked open the door.
The room was dark, like all the others, but a flashlight beam traced
across his chest and he felt the stinging pain of ultraviolet light. He
dived, and the beam lost him for a moment. In that moment, he found cover
behind a chair. He cringed as the UV flashlight traced across the chair,
but as it passed on he leapt from hiding and hurled the padded chair at
the light. It was a bulky object, and heavy, but it clipped the flashlight
and scattered it across the room. Temya stood alone and unarmed in the
center of the room.
Temya smiled.
"You always were the strongest."
Stefan acknowledged that with a nod.
"Well, you have me at a disadvantage. Now we will see wether you have the
mettle to finish what you began."
Stefan swished the blade in a figure-eight and held it horizontally behind
his head.  He stepped forward.
"Now this is the law of the Jungle,
As old and as true as the sky.
And the wolf that shall keep it, will prosper.
But the wolf that shall break it-"
Temya swung the crossbow from behind his back and fired. The shaft took
Stefan in the chest, and a chill rushed through him.
"Must die." Temya finished for him, stepping forward to gloat.
The shaft had gone close to Stefan's heart, too close. And the tip was
silvered. The wound was mortal.
"You first." he managed.
The blade slashed round and connected squarely. Temya's head rolled
backwards off his shoulders.
Stefan collapsed, twisting with all his might to avoid driving the bolt
any deeper. His breathing came in ragged gulps of air, the silver
sending cold waves through his veins.

Even as he shuddered, he heard a light footfall behind him.
"Are you..." Scully asked, afraid to finish the question.
"Not for long. I've made my last kill."
"Was it worth it?"
Stefan looked at Temya's corpse.
"I would have died a hundred times to finish him. I would have crawled
from the pits of hell for this revenge."
Scully's emotions churned within her. A little piece of her was dying with
him.
She sat beside him.
"Dana... I'm sorry..."
"For what?" Heat prickled under her eyelids.
"Doesn't matter, now. But I have a last favour to ask."
She leaned closer to him.
"When I'm gone... give me a proper burial. And while I'm here..." his
voice was fading. She leaned close.
"Kiss me." he said.
She cupped his face in her hands and touched her lips to his.
He exhaled, hard, and she felt a bitter taste in her mouth. She pulled away.
"A parting gift... a little of my blood. You'll not be a vampire, but
it'll give you a little of my strength. Use it well."
"Stefan..." she suddenly found it difficult to speak.
There was a moment of silence.
"You never could learn patience." said a female voice from the shadows.
Stefan twisted his head.
"Etienne?"
A slender woman, her skin as pale as moonlight, stepped from the darkness.
"Stefan." She smiled sadly, showing almost daintily pointed teeth. "If
you'd only waited."
"I have nothing left, Etienne. My purpose has been fulfilled. I can die
knowing that, if nothing else."
"I know."
Stefan's breathing was shallow.
"Farewell, my sister."
He paused, smiled thinly.
"I'll see you in hell."
So saying, he died.

Etienne reached over and closed his eyes.
"You would be Agent Scully. I've been watching you and Mulder for the last
few days."
Scully nodded.
"Then know this, Agent Scully. The night is ours, and your kind will never
reclaim it. The darkness nurtures us, lets us grow in strength... and in
numbers. Out there in the dark, we watch and wait... and some day, we will
step out into the baubles of light you throw around yourselves, and we
will take what we wish. Your kind cannot contain us, nor destroy us. We
own the night, Scully. We Are the night."
She turned and walked away.
"You're human too, Etienne." Scully called. "You may be different, but
you're still human."
Etienne paused and looked back.
"The last human part of me died here, tonight." She indicated Stefan's
body where it lay. "From now on... there is only vampyr. Au Revoir, Agent
Scully."
She walked out into the branches.
Mulder burst through the door and took in the scene in a moment.
"What-" he began, but Scully silenced him with a guesture.
He followed her gaze out into the darkness.
Amid the twisted branches of the trees, a multitude of red eyes glowed.
For a moment, they stared out of the blackness, and then they disappeared.
"And they went forth, and were fruitful, and multiplied." Scully said quietly.

Fin.

--
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Scully's phone number came from the episode with the COS computer.

The Enfield "Savage" was used by James Bond in the book "For Your Eyes Only".

The book "Bloodshift" by Garfield Reeves-Stephens, and the film "Interview
with the Vampire", were invaluable resources for the writing of this tale.


Author's note :

Just when you think you've had a good idea, it turns out someone else has
already had it. The appearance of the mock-Samantha in this story was
written before the episode "Miracle Man" was aired here in the UK.
Coincidences like that are perpetually happening to me, and they're
driving me insane... not that they needed to drive very far.

Please e-mail comments and critical appraisal to mraustin@bradford.ac.uk
All letters gratefully recieved.


+=======================================================================+
| []  "Stop! You are thinking muddily -   |
| Matt.R.Austin []   conduct ordinarily inexcusable! |
| M.R.Austin@bradford.ac.uk []   Now, youth, you will redeem |
| []   yourself by explaining this |
| []   phenomena to me!" |
| []    - Mentor of Arisia |
+=======================================================================+